


With A Face Like Flowers

by Razzaroo



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, Mythology References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 00:39:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5723077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzaroo/pseuds/Razzaroo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Blodeuedd had always been a part of Aurora's life." Two women made to love and crafted by magic must have some sort of understanding of each other, in some small way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With A Face Like Flowers

_They took the flowers of the oak and the flowers of the broom and the flowers of the meadowsweet and from those they conjured the fairest and most beautiful maiden that anyone had ever seen._

_And they baptised her in the way they did at the time and named her Blodeuedd._

***

Blodeuedd had always been part of Aurora’s life.

When Niall had been away, doing the things dreamers did that their dreams were not privy to, she read. Her favourite was Lleu and Blodeuedd, printed in Niall’s collection of Celtic myths, the pages left soft and dog eared from all the times she’d pulled it from its shelf to be her constant companion.

She always felt that she and Blodeuedd were women cut from the same cloth. Both of them had been made rather than born. Both had been made to be lovers; Blodeuedd by two magicians, Aurora by a dream forest. Lying together at night, Niall called her _bláth_ and buried his face in her neck to breathe in the smell of her perfume. She loved those nights; all the time she spent with Niall was a gift, something to be treasured.

That, she thought, is what made her different to Blodeuedd.  Blodeuedd didn’t treasure her Lleu; she resented him and betrayed him, despite him being the reason she lived at all.

Aurora could never understand how a woman who had been made for love could be so hateful.

 

* * *

 

 

When her baby was born, Aurora turned to her myths again. She sat in her armchair and rocked his chair with her foot, flipping through the book, past tales of Lir’s children and Olwen and Bedd Gellert. She stopped on Math fab Mathonwy and peered over the edge of the book at Declan, who was sucking on his knuckles.

“You know Mama has a sister,” she whispered and she set the book, pages down, aside on the arm of the chair to scoop him up to her chest. Cradling him in one arm, she picked up the book again, “She’s made of flowers.”

“And Mama was born of trees,” Niall said, leaning on the door frame, rain caught in his dark hair, “So of course we know who is superior.”

“Flowers are more beautiful.”

“And trees more steadfast and faithful,” Niall said, “Something far more valuable than beauty on its own.” He dropped a kiss to her cheek, “And hopefully you’ll live as long.”

“Does that make you my flower?” she asked, knowing the nature of the lives of dreams, “My briar? Lovely but fleeting.”

Niall pulled a face and left to wash the rain from his hair. Aurora curled up in her chair, wrapping herself around Declan; he hiccupped and his whole tiny body jerked from it. Her heart swelled with affection and she pushed the book aside, content to sit with him until he slept. The book hit the floor, blurb up, and the light from the lamp gleamed on the meadowsweet on the glossy cover.

She wondered if maybe Blodeuedd had betrayed Lleu so because he had never made her truly happy.

 

* * *

 

 

The night Niall died, Aurora had been up waiting for him to come home. She felt mostly alone, with her sons cloistered on their own. A wind howled around the Barns and there was a sick feeling in her stomach that told her the night would not end well. She shifted in bed; every time she’d had the feeling before, it had preceded illness or arguments or, in the worst cases, Ronan bringing one of his childhood nightmares into his bedroom.

She pushed her blankets away and left the room, heading to the study with its vast private library of books both real and dreamt. Her fingers itched for their pages and she longed for their company and their comfort.

She barely made it up the hallway.

Her connection to Niall was severed in one blow. Her knees buckled and the part of her that kept her anchored to the world instantly sought out the nearest dreamer to hold her. She felt itself latch on to Ronan, twining its roots in amongst his own dreams, nestling up next to Matthew and some nightmares Ronan had use against Declan in a childhood fight a long time ago.

“No,” she whispered as the heavy rug of sleep pulled away from her, “Not Ronan. I won’t…I won’t leech from him.”

She held her breath and pulled that part of her away from Ronan, feeling her heart break. She slumped against the wall and closed her eyes as the dream forest reached out to reclaim her from the land of the living. Her thoughts lingered on her sons, on her three dreams, on Niall and whether the dreamers and the dreams go to the same place, and on whether Gwydion had been more merciful to Blodeuedd than he had intended.

After all, it would be kinder to be feathered and stay free than to force a living, breathing, feeling woman to give it all up to return to the flowers of the forest.

 


End file.
